


I'll Be Everything To You

by startrekto221B



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Deal with a Devil, Guardian Angels, John Loves Sherlock, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-06 18:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4231434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startrekto221B/pseuds/startrekto221B
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson died sometime in 1920 but he can't remember who he was, whom he knew or how he died. He's given a second chance to prove himself by the lord of Death and asked to take care of a child who will be born to Siger and Violet Holmes of Sussex. As a result, though he doesn't realize it, Sherlock Holmes has had a guardian angel his entire life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Inferno

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MyLittleSecret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyLittleSecret/gifts).



The living imagine hell as a hideous dungeon. Full of dank and teeming with parasites. Alive with monstrous fire. But they could not be more wrong. When considered it was obvious. Certainly one like the Lord of Death, who had himself seen the grandeur of heaven in a time long past, would desire for himself a magnificent seat. And so he, Satan, Lord of Death, Gatherer of Souls, Punisher of Sinners, Creator of Eternal Torment, among other names, had built for himself a huge hall, ornate with carvings of burning men, clothes of crimson and gold hanging from the impossibly tall ceiling and for himself a glittering golden throne. The only thing missing from this immaculate place was God’s favored child, the pure light of day, and the shadows cast by the many torches only served to heighten the grim sense of doom.

It was to this hall, where many famous men and squalid beggars alike had come to enter eternal purgatory that they brought the youngest of the Lord of Death’s chosen few, strong souls in life whom he had chosen to serve him in eternity.

He was brought in heavy dark chains and made to kneel, and as the two who had brought him stepped away, the one at the right of the great throne stepped forward to speak. He was Ajax, of the dark horned helm and the cruelest of the Lord’s chosen.

“What have you done, John?” he asked, mockingly sweet.

“It was a child…you can’t expect me to—“ John spoke from the ground and cringed as he was struck with a flaming whip.

“I have not come for explanations, I told the Lord when he chose you that you would not be able to do this, weakling, you had a chance…but now you shall neither enjoy the fruits of heaven nor an eternity’s service with the master.” Ajax spit at him.

All this time the shadowy figure on the throne had said nothing, but now he beckoned Ajax close and whispered something to him, when the proud angel of death stepped away John noticed that his face was charred and burned.

“The Lord wishes to say that I have overstepped. And I gladly accept his punishment,” Ajax said bitterly, “You made a beginner’s error. You’re to be given another chance.”

“Another chance?” John panted, slightly relieved but also terrified.

“You will perform a special task for the Lord.” Ajax said silkily, “There is a boy who will be born on Earth. You are to be his caretaker.”

“Caretaker, I can do that, I can,” John almost smiled.

“Good, now get out,” Ajax said, but then leaned close to his ear and whispered, “But don’t get complacent. You’ll taste the fire yet.”

It was only after John had unfurled his dark black wings and disappeared off into the distant void that Ajax questioned another of the chosen, “Caretaker?”

The angel laughed, “He will tend to the child. See him through much of his life. Grow attached. The lord needs such youthful souls from time to time, to feed his fire, though they are faultless. The lord will ask for the child’s soul. And John will bring it to him, becoming one with death forever.”

“And if he does not?” Ajax smiled victoriously.

“Then he will burn.”

***

In life he had been John Watson, but of his old life he could remember nothing at all. He was the youngest of the lord’s chosen, but the last time he had walked on Earth as a man had been around 1920, and many things had changed since then. He had been an older man when he died but in his accursed afterlife he had been restored to his youth, albeit with a pair of dark black wings. As one of the chosen he had the ability to change form at will, though he much preferred to go about in his own form, that of a sandy haired man of medium height and soft eyes. He wasn’t the typical sort that Satan picked, lacking both the essential cruelty and manic fervor with which the others did their work. He felt a great pity for the souls he took with him, great anger at himself, and though he knew many to be sinners he did not think they deserved their fate.

It was good then, that he was going to the surface. Back to England, where he was told he had died and had supposedly lived all those years ago. His vision for things told him exactly where to go, to a quiet little house with green shutters in Sussex, the country residence of Mrs. Violet Holmes, her husband Siger and their young son Mycroft. It also told him that here, on a hot sticky July afternoon; he was to meet his charge, now resting snugly in Violet’s stomach, just shy of a week overdue.

“Hello, I don’t think we’ve met,” Violet wiped sweat from her brow as she answered the door, then tightened her crisp white apron around her swollen belly.

“I live just across the road actually, in the Manderly’s old house, wanted to meet the neighbors, and I suppose I’ll be having another neighbor pretty soon,” John laughed.

“Oh yes,” Violet smiled, “Why don’t you come in? I was just going to make some nice cool lemonade for me and Mycroft, my son, Siger will be home in a few minutes. He works in the city at the big bank. What do you do Mr.—“

“Dr. Watson, actually, I’m a medical doctor,” John said, “Know if it’s a girl of a boy?”

“Oh I know it’s a girl this time, Mycroft never kicked this much. I’m going to name her Sherlock.” Violet searched the cabinets for the sugar.

“Isn’t Sherlock a boy’s name?” John asked, confused.

“No, Sherlock is actually a girl’s name; it was my grandmother’s name. And she was as much a woman as they come. Seven children. Can you imagine? I’ve had the most interesting time carrying just the one. Mycroft was fine of course, but this baby’s been nothing but trouble since—“ a mild look of panic passed over her face.

“Yes?” John looked at her, trying to feign surprise.

“I think my water broke,” she said worriedly, “It did. I—Dr. Watson—oh!”

As he went to steady her he spotted a red-headed little boy pop out from behind the sofa, “Who would you be?”

“Help me out here,” John said, “Your mother’s going to have a baby.”

The boy came a little closer, but still looked at John suspiciously, “Who are you, though?”

“Dr. John Watson, I live in the old Manderly house up the road,” he said, “Now come on. Do you have a car? I can drive her to the hospital.”

“Dr. Watson, call Siger, tell him Sherlock’s coming,” Violet said.

“The Manderly house was sold to the Nortons, how’d you possibly buy it?” the boy asked.

“Mycroft don’t ask silly question, help Mummy to the car,” Violet reprimanded him.

John helped her into the passenger seat and sat himself in the driver’s chair, fully aware that in the middle of their way to the hospital they would have to stop and he would have to deliver the child himself. It could not do, however, to tell them that he knew this, because how could he possibly explain?

It was lucky, he thought later, that Mr. Holmes had seen their car parked by the side of the road and stopped his beside them. Just in time to see the red-faced and screaming child, still bloody. Siger was so thankful to his new neighbor that he immediately hushed his other son, who still claimed there was something not quite right about this Dr. Watson, and invited the good doctor to take his car back to the Manderly house while he drove his wife the rest of the way to the hospital. After all, it could have been quite a risky delivery if John hadn’t been there.

John quickly agreed to take the car, staying just long enough to hear Mr. Holmes’ patient sigh as his wife revealed that she would call the baby Sherlock anyway, despite the fact that it was, as John had known it was, a fine dark-haired boy.

***

The birth had been difficult, Violet later confided in him, and she was so very glad that he had been there. She was gladder still now, in the quiet afternoons when her husband was off at work and Mycroft away at school that she had someone to talk to. Not that it was too quiet of course. Sherlock cried morning, noon and night. And when she wasn’t nursing she was singing or rocking him back and forth.

Yet there were some times when she heard him shriek in the crib and went to him nothing she did could calm him down. And it was only when she passed him over to John in an act of desperation that he would stop crying and sometimes even fall asleep.

“He feels safe with you, it’s like you’re his guardian angel,” Violet said one day.

“Nothing like that, just a Doctor’s touch is all,” John said good naturedly.

“Dr. Watson,” Mycroft said distrustfully as he came home from school.

“Mycroft,” John tried to smile reassuringly but he was eerily sure that the kid saw through him, which was strange, mortals rarely saw through him. He wondered for a second whether Mycroft could see his great dark wings, but then was relieved as he turned away, perhaps it was just a childish misgiving.

 As he held the boy in his arms John wondered for the millionth time what was so special about this particular boy. Certainly he was strong, when he gripped John’s finger he held it tighter than John had believed that tiny hand capable. And though John was himself an angel of a sort he had rarely seen a child’s face so angelic. Only a few months old now but with a full head of soft black curls. Big blue eyes that bored holes into John’s mind and often held his stare. But there wasn’t anything altogether different about this baby, John decided. Perhaps only time would tell.

***

John was a cherished friend of the Holmes’ by now, though he hadn’t known them long. To keep up with his persona he had established a small clinic in the Manderly house, and it was there that both Sherlock and Mycroft stayed during his off hours, so Violet could run errands and visit her friends.

Mycroft still didn’t like him but allowed him nevertheless to teach him how to ride a bicycle, which despite the child’s obviously immense intellect, had proved a rather difficult task. Mycroft, John noticed was a far chubbier child than Sherlock, always had been, and it wreaked havoc on his general sense of balance.

Now the Sherlock could crawl he was a menace amongst John’s medical equipment. Always touching, prodding, throwing—John often fancied that the baby was conducting an experiment to see just what everything was, and what it took for everything to break. John had have a mind to scold him or something but he just couldn’t, the kid was too damned cute and even when he did reprimand him all he did was sulk. And John couldn’t bear the sulk.

So instead to occupy his time John would read him stories. The Manderly children had liked pirate stories, so that was the bulk of what they had up in the attic and what Sherlock got to listen to as a result. Initially John was unsure whether he liked it, as he couldn’t talk yet he could only gurgle happily or cry. But strangely enough Sherlock managed to thwack the page of books he had been read more than once at precisely the point when the page should be turned, and John knew then that his charge was uncommonly bright, genius even. He was strangely proud.

He had taken the part of caretaker very seriously. When little Sherlock got the flu he was at his bedside night and day. Rocking his tiny fevered body for hours as Sherlock cried and cried, even as Violet protested that John would himself fall sick. It was no matter, he said, little did she know he could not fall sick at all, and that death itself could not touch him.

When Sherlock learned to walk he ran first to John. When he learned to talk his first word was John’s name. When he was just ready for nursery school he clung to John’s leg rather than his mother’s and exclaimed loudly his favorite word “Won’t!” until Mycroft pried him away.

It was then that John noticed a change in the boy. He had chattered away to his family and to John but after going to school he was strangely quiet. His little habit of pointing out things about people that he had guessed didn’t earn him many friends, actually none at all and there was nothing John could do about that. Day after day after day Sherlock came home sad and wilted. He stared out the windows when it rained and John noticed one day in the first standard that his arms had purple bruises.

“Do you fight with the other kids Sherlock?” John asked calmly.

“Other kids are dull,” he replied.

“But do you?” John asked again.

“They’re boring, don’t know anything, most of them can’t even read, idiots,” Sherlock said in his high childish voice.

“Sherlock? Do you fight with them?” John repeated.

“Course not,” Sherlock said sullenly, “When they don’t like what I say they hit me.”

It was enough of this guise, John thought, it wasn’t helping any longer. John Watson quietly vacated the Manderly House a week or so after, to visit his ailing mother, after telling Violet that Sherlock was having trouble at school. But he would come back the very next day in his second form.

Sherlock was wandering alone in the field near his house when a red basset-hound came running up to him. Initially startled, the boy looked at the dog inquisitively, then hesitantly reached out to pet it. It had such rich red fur; it tickled when the dog licked all over his face. This was no ordinary dull dog, he decided, this was his new friend.

The first night the dog followed Sherlock home Violet said no. Mycroft glared at him from the kitchen table with knowing eyes and the dog waited for him the next day outside of his school. The second night the dog followed Sherlock home Violet said no again. And the third. And the fourth. A week passed, and the dog spent its days tailing Sherlock wherever he wanted to go, taking part in dramatic plays and schemes where they were both pirates on the high seas.

“Good boy, Redbeard,” Sherlock said, “Good boy.”

John had never been so happy. The boy’s laugh had given him joy of a kind he had never gotten since he had died. He felt a surge in his heart and wagged his tail like anything.

Then one day after school a few boys surrounded Sherlock and began to heckle him.

“I didn’t mean to tell you your mother’s a lesbian,” Sherlock said, “Honest.”

“You take that back!” the bigger boy shouted, pushing him down to the ground.

“She is so. Just look at the way she walks. The clip in her hair. Even an idiot like you can—“ Sherlock continued.

“Shut up! Just shut up, you loser!” another boy kicked him.

John saw his chance. Redbeard jumped into the air and leapt on the biggest boy of the group, and barked as they went on their way, growling at the straggler and then turning back to his charge, who was crouching in the dirt of the road.

“You saved me, Redbeard, you’re clever for a dog. Cleverer than they are. Though that’s not saying much,” Sherlock said, fingering his ripped trousers, “Mum’s going to be angry. Let’s go home.”

This time when the dog followed Sherlock home Violet said yes.

“Get rid of that dog mother,” Mycroft insisted.

“Nonsense, that dog is the best thing that’s happened to Sherlock in years,” Violet said.

“Mother—“

“Mycroft!”

The dog stayed.

Redbeard and his master went on many adventures together. Whether he knew it or not, Sherlock re-enacted all the old stories that doctor friend of his parents had read to him as a child. He wanted to grow up and be a pirate he told Mycroft.

“You can’t be a pirate,” his brother said, “Totally unreasonable.”

“Snob,” Sherlock snapped.

“Infant,” Mycroft retorted.

John growled and Mycroft stepped back in shock. Sherlock laughed. And that was the end of it.

Despite all of Redbeard’s best efforts to create friendship between Sherlock and the other children nothing seemed to work. They didn’t like him. He didn’t particularly want to make an effort for them. He was weird. They were stupid to him. But in the end they went about their ways. And he was lonely.

At night the dog would come into his bed and Sherlock would clutch him as he fell asleep, telling him all of the great things he would do when he was older.

“I’ve changed my mind, Redbeard, I’m not going to be a pirate, I’m going to be a detective, I’ll do whatever I want and I won’t need anyone else at all. I’ll solve murders and I’ll be famous and I’ll be alone. Alone protects me,” the kid whispered into his fur in the dark.

Without fail it was the last thing he said to Redbeard as he fell asleep. Like a mantra. Some nights it was confident. Others just bluntly said. But some nights, the nights John hated, Sherlock would say it and the dog’s fur would end up wet with tears and the kid’s whole body would shake a little as he whispered the words into the night.

When Sherlock entered 6th standard the family decided to move to the city, leaving the house with the green shutters in Sussex and moving to London. Redbeard had grown old now, and they couldn’t possibly take him with them. Sherlock knew that. But that didn’t stop him from fighting it.

“You can’t put him down!” he screamed as they restrained him, “You just can’t.”

But they did. And so it was that John took his third form. This time it was that of an old white haired man with kindly grey eyes, the music teacher at Sherlock’s new school. Robert Lucas. Sherlock was gifted, he knew, and the gifted often had the gift of music.

“This is a violin,” he said the day of their first private lesson (he had suggested Mrs. Holmes send him the child, for he believed he had an ear for it), “Do you think you’ll be able to master it?”

“I hardly think it’s worth my time. Do you?” Sherlock asked icily, “Crotchety old man. No grandkids. Music is all you have. But you’ve never taught someone like me.”

“I can teach all sorts,” Lucas said.

“What if I don’t want to learn? What if I think it’s dull and beneath me?” Sherlock snapped.

“Are you afraid you can’t do it?” Lucas asked, a twinkle in his eyes.

“Of course not, “ Sherlock said, “Hand it here.”

And so the lessons began.

It was hard at first, and the sound atrocious but Sherlock’s long pale fingers were well suited to the instrument. He did indeed have a good ear, and over time he found that music was a better way for him to express himself than picking fights with the other boys, getting beaten up and repeating the whole process again.

“Give me a harder piece,” Sherlock demanded.

“There are no harder pieces,” Lucas confessed.

“What do you mean?” Sherlock asked, “What about my repertoire? What do I do?”

“You’ve got to perfect it. You’ve got to feel it. With your heart.” Lucas offered.

“What if I don’t have one?” Sherlock asked quietly.

It wasn’t the time to handle that one, Lucas considered for a moment, “If these pieces are too easy for you. You can always compose.”

By the time Sherlock reached Uni he kept coming in not really for lessons but just to show his compositions to the old man. They were young pieces, John noticed, full of mistakes and hubris. But they had promise. The boy had such promise. He was brilliant. He was amazing. If only everyone else could see that.

John knew though, without knowing exactly, that the music, despite all it had done to calm Sherlock’s racing mind, would not be enough. So he was disappointed when his star pupil failed to show up to class, but not entirely surprised, when he found that he had sacrificed everything, gambled everything, and turned to drugs. Lucas was old when he died. And so John took another form.

***

Sherlock always went to the same alleyway to buy cocaine. The bar nearby was tended by a young woman of twenty three, who always managed to find him and bring him to if took too much and constantly told him he was ruining his life. In the years to come Sherlock wouldn’t even remember her face, but had the distinct impression that she had been one of the few who had cared to stop him.

Ashley watched him when he shot up, watched when he was so out of control that he would kiss strangers and fuck in that alleyway and come back to the bar near closing time and oftentimes just collapse.

“You’re ruining yourself,” John said as her, “You’ve got to stop this.”

“What’s a man to do in a dull, dull world?” he said blearily, “I don’t want to live. Might as well live this way.”

“You’re brilliant. You’re amazing. You’re fantastic and you cannot live this way.”

It had been her who called the ambulance the day she feared he had overdosed. Her who finally got someone to call his brother and tell him what was going on. Sherlock, for his part, had long since forgotten her name, her face and everything she said. But he remembered that there had been someone trying to save him.

***

Now that Sherlock was clean and his early thirties John struggled to see where he could fit in. He was bound, by a cosmic tie to this man, yet he revolved around his star almost willingly. It was love, for sure, for the first time in a long time. He had forgotten how it felt.

He saw as he had always seen that Sherlock was alone. So what to do? What should he be? Perhaps the best thing, decided John, was that Sherlock should have a friend, a friend his own age, the age of John’s natural form. So he took on his natural appearance and personality, wanting for his own sake to meet his charge without a real guise at all, to meet him as he truly was. He had used his own name once before, but it was a fairly common one, and he didn’t think Sherlock would remember. So he took on what he hoped to be his last form. Recently retired from the army, shot in the shoulder, Dr. John Hamish Watson.

He had known Sherlock for years. He knew everything about him. So why, why was the question surprising?

Sherlock was not a boy anymore, he was handsome now, tall, those dark curls framing his face well, his voice deep and soft like velvet, and John, for all his foresight and powers was utterly taken aback by the carelessly uttered phrase, “Afghanistan or Iraq?”


	2. The Purgatory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through guarding Sherlock John gets a new lease on his life on Earth.

A black car took him to an abandoned warehouse. It was wet. And across from him was none other than formerly chubby Mycroft Holmes. Umbrella in tow. John hadn’t kept up tabs on Mycroft in the past few years as he had Sherlock, but his sight told him that he was looking at a very, very powerful, manipulative, and rather morally-grey man. If Mycroft Holmes should ever die, he mused, the lord of the dark angels would surely claim one such as him.

 

“You know our parents once had a friend named Dr. Watson, I believe his first name was John as well,” Mycroft remarked, looking at him curiously and making John wonder whether this man could really see through him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” he lied.

“In the span of a few hours you’ve met him, and you plan to move in with him, might I expect a happy announcement by the end of the week?” Mycroft asked.

“Look, it’s not like that, Mycroft.” John explained, and he immediately regretted it.

“I never said my name was Mycroft. Have we met before?” Mycroft smiled knowingly.

 

He was trapped now. He couldn’t get out of this, could he? Yes, he wanted to say, yes I have met you before, I taught you how to ride a bike, remember? Back when you were awkward and chubby and not the linchpin of her Majesty’s government. But he couldn’t say that.

 

“Sherlock told me about you.” John said, “Said his domineering brother would ask me to spy on him.”

“Did he now?” Mycroft seemed unconvinced.

“Look, I don’t know who you think I am, and I don’t care.”

“Very well,” Mycroft turned, “But I’ll be watching.”

 

As he left John let out a sigh of relief. So Mycroft knew something was up. He sort of always had. But it wasn’t a problem. Not really. So long as Sherlock remained oblivious. Which somehow, he always did.

***

John was surprised, he really was, that in all these years he had never thought that his charge might be gay. He had never really seen Sherlock having serious relations with either men or women, but the “Not my area.” comment was for women alone. Interesting.

He was fascinating. This new Sherlock. He was brilliant. He was amazing. More so than ever. John even told him so, and he was pleased to see that all these years later Sherlock’s body language was relatively the same. He liked the praise. He thrived on it. Sherlock’s laughter in the hallway later was like an old friend--only matured. It was not the high-pitched giggle of the little boy. Or the drunken slurred laughter of the teenager. It was something all its own. John had always loved Sherlock. But now perhaps, he was beginning to genuinely like him. There was a difference.

He had seen how Sherlock still interacted with other people. With that Inspector Lestrade, Anderson and Donovan. He came off as mean. Rude. Standoffish. Prickly. But John remembered those boys at school. He remembered how Sherlock had clung to Redbeard the dog and he didn’t think that he blamed him.

Then of course, there were the flashes. The first time it happened had been when he and Sherlock were riding together in the cab. He had suddenly had a vision of another rainy London night, driving along the road in a hansom. The reflection of gas-lamps in the water running through the street. It was a memory, he thought bizarrely. But how could it be? The other time it had happened was after he shot the cabbie, when Sherlock and he had walked off to have dinner together. He had looked at the other man’s face, and suddenly it was the same face but different. For an instant Sherlock was wearing a cap with two fronts, he was carrying a pipe. The words My Dear Watson floated in his mind. And then the moment was gone. He didn’t know what to make of it. And Sherlock, like always, didn’t seem to have noticed.

He didn’t note down John’s timely arrival on the scene as unusual either. John had thought his game was up when he managed to find where the cabbie had taken Sherlock. Gotten into the exact room necessary to make that very precise kill shot. What were the odds? Sherlock however, didn’t even question it. The weird thing too, John observed, was that he hadn’t questioned it either. He hadn’t spent a single second on thinking whether or not he should take the shot when he realized Sherlock was in danger. He had just done it. He didn’t even stay by the body long enough to see the creeping figure of a fellow dark angel come to claim the soul. It was Sherlock, his universe, that mattered. The only thing that mattered to him in a long, long time.

***

It quietly thrilled him every time Sherlock played the violin. He remembered those afternoon lessons as Lucas, he stifled the instinct he had still to instruct or to correct. After all, John Watson had only ever learned the clarinet at school and that too badly. So he would just listen, just listen and marvel at the music this tall, brilliant man could make.

John thought it was strange to think he could still learn new things about a man who he had seen from his birth. But Sherlock was strange. Sometimes he could be a real trial. At times John forgot himself, forgot that he was a creature of the night and the dead and he just let his flatmate have it for things like putting body parts in the fridge and behaving a bit not good at crime scenes. Bit by bit he stopped using his sight, stopped unfurling his black wings at night when he was alone. He began coming into himself. Into John Watson. Through Sherlock he began to have a second life.

It had happened more and more as the months went on. The flashes. Sometimes when they were sitting together in cabs, or even at home, or just anywhere with Sherlock the visions would start. Visions of another London. An older London that was somehow dimmer if it was night, slightly louder and dirtier. He had memorized the smell of that pipe. He had tried desperately to make the connection. But here was somewhere his sight could not show him. It was the one limitation the dark sight had, was that it could not see what was really inside the soul, only see the outline of them and reap them. He could not see within his own to figure out why these visions came. Why Sherlock was the catalyst.

Yet this wasn’t what began to bother him most about the sight, he realized, no, it was something else. Sherlock’s soul had always glowed brighter than most. Which might surprise the likes of Sally Donovan, John thought, but it was true. It was bright and pure and lovely. Just the same, shockingly, as it had been since the day he was born. Most people’s purpled or mutated or shrunk or dimmed. But Sherlock’s soul was beautiful. John yearned to look inside it. To see what it was Sherlock truly craved and to give it to him. But John could not see, and after all these years, he thought ashamedly, he really should know by now.

For a time he had believed it was Moriarty. An intellectual equal, perhaps, was what Sherlock wanted. It was disappointing to him, for some reason. As if he had wanted for Sherlock’s other half to be John himself. It was when he had seen Moriarty’s soul that he had began to second guess. It was a barely flickering light. Small and dim. The kind of souls that the dark angels sometimes had when they took human forms. The kind of soul that he might see in himself if he could see his own form. Sherlock deserved better than that. Sherlock’s equal could only be one who shone with the light of a thousand suns. Blemishless. Not like Moriarty. And not even like John.

He had wondered if he’d have to blow his cover right at the pool. He had tried to get Sherlock to leave first, jumping on Moriarty and telling Sherlock to run. But Sherlock wouldn’t go. Sherlock wanted to shoot and create an explosion that would kill them all at once. John had nodded. He had planned to grab Sherlock the instant that bomb went off, unfurl his black wings and vanish them both from the spot. But it hadn’t been necessary. And his glorious second life could go on.

After the pool Sherlock had begun to behave differently. He looked at John strangely. And on one such occasion when they both stood by the window together John got a vision of a different street outside. Gas-lit lamps. Hansoms running down the street. 1895. Something clicked inside John. And at the same time something seemed to have clicked in Sherlock too.

“Did you see that?” Sherlock asked, stepping closer to John so that he could see the worry in those familiar blue-green eyes.

“Must be the heat,” John said.

Sherlock turned away from him then, “Must be.”

It was bizarre. Or it should have been. But lately it had just been feeling more and more right. As if this was the way it was supposed to be. Him and Sherlock together. Side by side. And as he wondered and wondered at what might be inside Sherlock’s soul, that wonderful soul that he was sent here to protect, he began to realize one of the many things that was in his own.

Lust was a human thing. John might look like a human now, but he wasn’t one. He was an angel. And angels didn’t feel things like what he was feeling. Wasn’t it wrong too? To feel it for someone he was sworn to protect? That had to be ungodly right? But what did he care about ungodly? After all, John thought darkly, he worked for Satan himself. Besides, he thought. Sherlock made him feel human. When he touched Sherlock’s skin it produced sensations in him that had long been muted. Walking around with Sherlock there was a touch more color in the world, as if a bit of Sherlock’s brightness was scattered around him. Why shouldn’t he give Sherlock this one, last bit of happiness that the other man had been denied? Because he doesn’t want it, John thought, not from me. There’s something else he wants, something else. So again, John began to wonder, even as he lusted. He began to wonder what that was.

It was during the search for Henry Knight’s hound that he began to put it together. It was the first time in a long time he had seen Sherlock truly scared. And that line. “I don’t have friends.” That was telling. All this thinking, though, he had done in retrospect. At the time he had simply gotten angry, reacting as John Watson the man, rather than John Watson the angel. He had left Sherlock when he should have been with him. It was foolish, utterly foolish.

In retrospect there were several things about the incident that had stood out. Sherlock had called him a “conductor of light”. That was awfully close to what he was, as a caretaker to Sherlock, who was the brightest soul John had ever seen in his afterlife, he was a conductor of light. And the other line. “I don’t have friends. I’ve just got one.” It made him guilty. Really guilty. That throughout Sherlock’s life there had been many such friends. But there really had been one.

***

Down in the chasm that was hell, Ajax, who had bidden his time all these years suddenly remembered.

The Lord had indicated it was close now, very close to the point where John would rejoin the brotherhood. 

"He won't be able to," Ajax said snidely to another angel.

"Why not? It should be easy."

"Not so," Ajax laughed, and the sound was rude and cold, "John has made his greatest mistake yet."

"What mistake is that?"

"He's fallen in love."

***

“You were scared,” John said finally after they had returned to the flat.

“Yes. Obviously. The drugs were interfering with my senses.” Sherlock said a bit defensively.

“That sense of fear. It was new for you.” John hoped he was making sense.

“I’ve always had the sense…” Sherlock looked a bit conflicted, “That I was protected. It sounds idiotic I know. But I always felt that there was someone out there watching out for me.”

“Maybe there is.” John said slowly, carefully.

 

It was nighttime then. Eerily quiet. The balance between them had shifted somehow. John could see the glow of Sherlock’s soul. That spark in his eyes. And he could see the revelation before it happened.

 

“Sometimes, John.” Sherlock said, “You act like you’ve known me forever.”

“Maybe in another life,” John admitted, and suddenly a piece of it made sense.

 

My Dear Watson. 1895. Each flash. Spurred only by Sherlock. Could it be?

 

“I really do like dogs you know. I think maybe that’s I decided to take the case after all. Subconsciously.”

“Yeah?” John’s throat was dry.

“I had a dog, a long, long time ago.” Sherlock continued softly, “His name was Redbeard.”

“He protected you.”

“There’s always something. Something to show me the way. I probably sound half delirious to you right now.” Sherlock tried to laugh.

“No, you don’t.” John stepped closer, so they were almost face to face.

 

How long had he loved Sherlock Holmes? Years and years. He couldn’t see into his soul but he could certainly see into his eyes. They were asking. Wanting. Why shouldn’t he love Sherlock that way too? Who had a greater right than he did? He who had loved Sherlock from the start.

 

“What do you really think of me John?”

“You’re the brightest thing I’ve ever seen.” John said without thinking.

“You would do anything for me. And I don’t particularly know why. Why you care.”

“You’re special,” John told him the truth, “I couldn’t tell you why.”

 

“Please, John.” Sherlock said, and John finally saw that they wanted the same thing.

 

As he kissed Sherlock there was another flash. Another kiss in another time. Another version of Sherlock against the wall of 221B. The wall with the smiley face that Sherlock had shot. Sherlock’s soft, warm lips in a different world. Then again in this one. Through it all, as John carded his fingers through brown curls, Sherlock was the only constant. Sherlock was the only anchor between the dream and reality. John felt Sherlock tense under his hands.

 

“You should know--I’ve never done this sober.” Sherlock confessed.

John swallowed, because he knew, he knew because he had seen the entire pageant of Sherlock’s life unfold before him, seen that despite everything, even in those days with the cocaine when everything was going wrong, Sherlock had still glowed like anything.

“That’s alright,” John said, his heart full to bursting, feeling more human than ever, “I want to have this with you. If you let me. If you let me I’ll be everything to you.”

  
Then Sherlock, his sun, his only true reality, had kissed him back so desperately John wondered why he had waited so bloody long. My Dear Watson echoed in his head in Sherlock’s impossibly sexy voice. And it was then, with the warmth of Sherlock pressed against him, that John began to wonder how exactly he had died.

**Author's Note:**

> 3 Parts. In which John's old life, Sherlock's fate, and John's will be revealed.


End file.
